Karl Marx (1818–1883)

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Summary: First Manuscript
“Estranged Labor”
Under the economic system of private ownership,
society divides itself into two classes: the property
owners and the property-less workers. In this
arrangement, the workers not only suffer
impoverishment but also experience an estrangement
or alienation from the world. This estrangement occurs
because the worker relates to the product of his work
as an object alien and even hostile to himself. The
worker puts his life into the object and his labor is
invested in the object, yet because the worker does not
own the fruits of his labor, which in capitalism are
appropriated from him, he becomes more estranged the
more he produces. Everything he makes contributes to
a world outside of him to which he does not belong.
He shrinks in comparison to this world of objects that
he helps create but does not possess. This first type of
alienation is the estrangement of the worker from the
product of his work.
The second type of alienation is the estrangement of
the worker from the activity of production. The work
that the worker performs does not belong to the worker
but is a means of survival that the worker is forced to
perform for someone else. As such, his working
activity does not spring spontaneously from within as
a natural act of creativity but rather exists outside of
him and signifies a loss of his self.
The third form of alienation is the worker’s alienation
from “species-being,” or human identity. For human
beings, work amounts to a life purpose. The process of
acting on and transforming inorganic matter to create
things constitutes the core identity of the human
being. A person is what he or she does in transforming
nature into objects through practical activity. But in
the modern system of private ownership and the
division of labor, the worker is estranged from this
essential source of identity and life purpose for the
human species.
The fourth and final form of alienation is the
“estrangement of man to man.” Since the worker’s
product is owned by someone else, the worker regards
this person, the capitalist, as alien and hostile. The
worker feels alienated from and antagonistic toward
the entire system of private property through which the
capitalist appropriates both the objects of production
for his own enrichment at the expense of the worker
and the worker’s sense of identity and wholeness as a
human being.
Analysis
The 1844 Economic and Philosophical manuscripts
remained unpublished during Marx’s lifetime and did
not surface until 1927, some forty-four years after his
death. These manuscripts illustrate the young Marx’s
transition from philosophy to political economy (what
is now called economics). Marx’s emerging interest in
the economy is apparent here—an interest that
distinguishes him from other followers of Hegel—but
his writing in these texts is much more philosophical,
abstract, and speculative than his later writing. For
example, the concept of species-being, of what it
means to be human, is essentially a philosophical
question. These manuscripts give us a glimpse into
Marx’s intellectual frame of reference and into the
philosophical convictions that underlie his later, less
explicitly philosophical work.
In the first manuscript, Marx adopts Hegel’s concept of
alienation, the idea that human beings can become out
of sync with the world they live in, but he interprets
this concept differently, arguing that alienation arises
from the way human beings regard their own labor. In
these early manuscripts, Marx reveals himself as the
great philosopher of work, which he sees as a process
of transforming physical matter (raw materials) into
objects of sustenance. This process is fundamental to
a person’s identity and sense of place in the word,
according to Marx. In capitalism, which is founded on
the principle of private property, work as a source of
identity and location is seriously undermined. Those
without property (namely, workers in factories, etc.)
must hand over their productive capacities, their
essence as human beings, to another person, to the
factory owners, the wealthy capitalists. This is not only
inherently frustrating and unsatisfying but also turns
workers against the capitalists and the system of
private property that is the source of their frustration.
Summary: Third Manuscript
“The Meaning of Human Requirements” and “Critique
of Hegelian Dialectic and Philosophy as a Whole”
In a capitalist society, human needs are defined by the
system of private ownership. Instead of mere food,
clothing, and shelter, human beings need money.
Moreover, capitalism mandates different needs for the
different social classes that it creates. As capitalists
accumulate wealth, their needs become increasingly
more refined, even as the workers are forced to adjust
their needs downward, making do with the bare
minimum that the system pays them to stay alive. The
modern system of ethics is shaped by the needs
created by capitalism. In capitalism, self-denial
becomes a cardinal virtue, with the moral ideal
embodied by the miser and the thrifty worker scrimping
and saving. Everything and everyone is treated in terms
of utility and price. Capitalism demands that people be
oriented to the world in this way simply to secure their
own survival. In such a system, the worker quickly
becomes conscious of his deprived and miserable
status in relation to the capitalist. The solution to this
situation of alienation is Communism, which does
away with alienation by doing away with the system of
private property that creates it.
Marx praises the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach as the
best of Hegel’s followers, because of Feuerbach’s
demonstration that religion is a reflection of human
alienation stemming from antagonistic social
relationships. Marx approves of Feuerbach’s criticism
of Hegel for privileging religious belief, knowledge,
abstract thought, and consciousness above the
sensual, the real, and the material. Hegel correctly
identifies labor as the essence of man but mistakenly
defines labor as mental activity rather than actual
physical labor. For Hegel, the dialectical process leads
the mind in its search for certainty away from the
world of the senses and objective reality, from nature
to abstract self-awareness.
According to Hegel, the most highly evolved state of
self-consciousness is a self-objectification that carries
with it the experience of alienation. The function of
religion, civil society, and the state is to enable the
objectified, self-conscious subject to feel at home in
the world. Marx sees this movement away from nature
and toward a reliance on such institutions in order to
ameliorate alienation as a mistake. For Marx,
alienation results from estrangement from nature. In
religious experience, the subject finds confirmation of
his own alienation, he does not negate it. Human
beings are motivated at a fundamental level by their
relationship to natural objects through their senses.
Their needs are sensual, and human passions stem
from the excitements or frustrations of sensual desire
for natural objects. This situation is the essence of
human experience. Human beings seek self-realization
by working on and transforming natural objects. Man
is not at home in the world when this basic need does
not find a proper outlet, which it lacks in capitalism.
When one is estranged from nature, one is estranged
from oneself.
Analysis
This manuscript is particularly dense and difficult
because in it Marx is so deeply engaged in Hegelian
philosophy, which is itself an extremely difficult and
abstract subject. Here we see Marx moving away from
the idealism of his main philosophical predecessor,
Hegel, toward the materialism that forms the bedrock
of his own view of human nature and history. In these
passages, Marx follows closely Hegel’s dialectical
method, beginning with the most basic concepts and
abstracting toward more comprehensive ones. Marx
differs from Hegel in rejecting ideas, or pure thought,
as the mode through which human beings relate to the
world. In Hegel’s system, the mind’s initial attempt to
grasp at the nature of objects leads it away from the
input of the senses toward more abstract concepts, to
culture and religion and eventually to an objective
understanding of self. Consciousness and self-
consciousness represent abstractions from material
reality. In contrast, Marx argues that experience is built
first and foremost around material needs and wants
and that the organization of society grows out of this
primary experience. In the manuscripts, this perspective
leads him to focus on labor and the loss of control of
one’s labor as the defining moment of the modern age.
In later works, this will be supplemented by an
elaborated notion of exploitation.
Source:
http://m.sparknotes.com/philosophy/marx/section1.rhtml